Silence is Not the Answer

Imagine hearing the lunch bell ring. Instead of running to the cafeteria, you run to the school library, arriving just in time for the
... zombie apocalypse?

You have just entered teacher-librarian Amy Wilde’s library
at Cascade Middle School in Bend, Ore.

Imagine that your high school classes have been cut short so you
can attend an assembly to listen to Jay Asher, acclaimed author of
Thirteen Reasons Why, speak. On another day, the guest speaker
is Michelle Lesniak, 2013 winner of Project Runway, or a photo-
journalist whose work documents the Black Panther Party. These
speakers have all been brought to the school as a part of an author
visit program spearheaded by Paige Battle, teacher-librarian at
Grant High School.

Or imagine you are an elementary student challenged to par-
ticipate in the competitive reading program known as Battle of the
Books by Ridgeview Elementary School teacher-librarian Karen
Babcock, whose principal believes unfailingly in the importance of
fully funded school libraries.

Now, imagine you attend school in a building that has cut library
funding so severely that there is no certi ed teacher-librarian at the
helm. The book budget has been decimated. So has the technology
budget. If you’re lucky, a library assistant remains to help you check
out materials — but only if you’re lucky.

A Banned Book display
peaks students' interest
in the library at Cascade
Middle School in Bend.

This final bleak scenario is reality for the
majority of students in Oregon since the
2007 recession. Only Oregon’s luckiest (read:
most often wealthiest) students have access
to fully qualified teacher-librarians and well-
resourced libraries, once again placing students in poverty at a disadvantage.

This is in spite of the fact that access to
teacher-librarians is proven time and again
to improve student learning.

Despite a rebounding economy in which
schools are starting to re-invest in many
of the programs cut during the economic
downturn, school library programs have
been left to stagnate, and students are suffering.

Oregon’s teacher-librarians are ghting
back.

At the OEA Representative Assembly in
April 2016, member Tricia Snyder, a teacher-librarian at Reynolds Middle School in
Multnomah County, crafted a New Business
Item seeking to conduct a study of student
access to both teacher-librarians and library
resources in Oregon. The study was ap-
proved and is well under way. Initial data is
confirming what nationwide studies have al-
ready shown conclusively — teacher-librarians are vital to a school’s success. Without
them, students su er.

“In my own district, I’ve seen music specialists brought back, PE specialists brought
back,” Snyder says, noting that these are not
all full-time positions. “But the library has
still not been discussed. It’s (seen as) important, but it’s never important enough to
make it back on the table.”

Her mission, then, in crafting the NBI is
to bring awareness to the trends plaguing
Oregon’s teacher-librarians that are to the
detriment of students.

Many students at Cascade Middle School spend their lunch hour in the library with teacher-librarian Amy Wilde.

Oregon’s libraries
are under-staffed

In 1980, there were 880 full time teacher-librarians employed in Oregon schools. By
2014, that number dropped to 144, accord-
ing to a report released in 2014 by the Oregon Association of School Libraries (OASL).

Put another way, the number of licensed
school librarians in Oregon has dropped by
61 percent since 1980, while the number of
students per librarian has more than tripled,
according to the Quality Education Mode (QEM) and School Libraries' 2011 annual
report.

Jen Maurer, school library consultant for
the state of Oregon, explains that the QEM
was the Oregon Legislature’s attempt to
determine the level of funding necessary to
fund a best-practice prototypical school.

The QEM created three “prototype”
schools (elementary, middle, and high
school) and drew out detailed, itemized bud-
gets.

“They do, in that model, have three points
that speak to school library programs. One
is how many FTE of licensed librarians you
would have, one is about support staff in
the schools, and the third is how much you
would spend on books and periodicals, all
together, print or electronic, per student,”
she says.

Maurer says that in 2011, the last year
the QEM library data was analyzed, only
ve schools met the QEM’s library funding levels.
Many teacher-librarians will tell you that the ideal level of staffing for school libraries is at least one full time teacher-librarian
and one full time library assistant per building. These two employees, one certified, one
support professional, often work in tandem
with a textbook clerk, local library volunteers, and student aides.

Karen Babcock, a librarian
at Ridgeview Elementary
School in Spring eld
reads to students.

Only then can the school library function
most effectively.

“The research is clear on what makes a difference in academic achievement, and what
makes a difference in academic achievement
is a school library that is staffed by a teach-
er-librarian, supported by classiffied library
manager or library technician,” says Anne
Urban, the district librarian for Three Rivers
School District in Josephine County.

The research is also clear that a full-time
teacher-librarian on staff results in higher
academic performance as measured by reading test scores, according to the 2016
edition of School Libraries Work! A Compendium of Research Supporting the Effectiveness of School Libraries.

The problem is, many people don’t understand what it is, exactly, that a teacher-
librarian does.

A teacher-librarian goes by many names
including school librarian and library media specialist. Both are accurate terms, but
teacher-librarian is how Oregon’s school librarians refer to themselves because the
hyphenated job title describes both aspects
of the profession.

Like any librarian you would find in a
public library, teacher-librarians are information specialists, helping the public find
and access information. They are research
experts, and as information expands to
other mediums (including all the resources
of the digital age), they must be experts at
accessing information in various print and electronic forms.

Librarians also exist to help guard the principles of free speech in a democratic society
and they help connect readers with books
that will open them to the joy of reading.

Teacher-librarians do all that and more.
They are certified teachers who have added a
library media endorsement to their teaching
credentials. In addition to their “librarian”
duties, teacher-librarians wear a “teacher”
hat, too. They teach students to use media
and do research. These skills are becoming
more and more critical in a 21st-century society in which students are bombarded by
information from sources that aren’t always
reliable.

Teacher-librarians even have their own
state standards covering information literacy, reading engagement, social responsibility, and technology integration.

“The role of a teacher-librarian in today’s
school is different than it was 20 or 30 years
ago. It's to be an instructional leader,” Urban
says. “It’s to help create a culture of literacy
to support teachers in integrating instructional technology into their practice; it’s to
help teachers and students learn to be ex-
perts at digital citizenship and looking at
information.”

When a library assistant works with a
teacher-librarian, several educational opportunities exist at once. The teacher-librarian can visit a classroom and conduct
a lesson on research skills while the library
stays open, allowing the library assistant to
make book recommendations and check out
books.

Today, the reality in many schools is a library staffed by an education support professional making a valiant effort to keep the
library afloat. This is simply not adequate,
and students suffer as a result.

Oregon’s libraries
are under-resourced

“The technology in my library is abysmal,” says Snyder, the impetus behind the
OEA library study. While funding is scarce
for school library staff, the story is no different when it comes to new materials and
technology.

And in a world where technology changes
rapidly, the inability to update library and technology collections with new materials
becomes a very real problem for students
who need to navigate this tech for their future careers.

With a lack of new technology or access
to a professional to help them navigate, Oregon’s students are showing up to college
without the research skills necessary to
thrive.

Anne-Marie Deitering, associate univer-
sity librarian for learning services at OSU,
works with incoming college freshmen and
while she has noticed a willingness to dive
into research, she says students don’t really
know what to do when their rst search does
not yield answers.

“Students tend of come in with a fairly
high comfort level with finding information
and finding answers. It’s not necessarily a
very deep knowledge,” she says. “They don’t
necessarily have experience with a lot of different discourses or a lot of different types of
sources.”

The unfortunate reality for many public
school students today is that they have been
without a teacher-librarian for so long that
they don’t even know what resources they
are missing.

Maurer relays a conversation she had
with a parent in the Beaverton School District who played an instrumental role in that
district’s recent decision to re-prioritize library spending.

“And she said to me, ‘The sad part is, if
we wait too long and we go any more years
without having a librarian, I have no parents
to talk to who understand what a librarian
would be doing and could be doing,’” Maurer says. “They have no frame of reference
at that point. And I think that’s what’s sad,
is that with the years of lack of library pro-
grams in Oregon, there’s no point of reference for the majority of parents, the majority
of teachers, the majority of administrators.”

Deitering agrees, mourning the loss not
just of library staff and resources but also a
loss of cultural awareness around the function libraries play in society.

“When they’re not in schools, we lose the
idea of libraries as a common good, which
means we are less likely to have them in the
university, we’re less likely to have them
in the community. Most of what we do in school is very, very heavily focused on rewarding [students for] knowing things and
penalizing [them for] not knowing things.
I think we teach people to be afraid to show
that they don’t know things, but libraries are a
safe space to not know things,” Deitering says.

Teaching research skills in a way that
encourages genuine inquiry is a skill all
college-bound students need. It’s hard to
teach, and while subject-area teachers
don’t have this training, teacher-librarians
do. They are experts at teaching research,
but in order to teach that authentic inquiry,
they must have cutting-edge technology
tools, tools that students will be expected
to successfully navigate at the college level
— tools that many Oregon schools aren’t
funding.

“It comes down to the fact that we are trying to build independent thinkers. That’s the
core of what school libraries do,” Maurer
says. “Advanced search skills are not easy to
come by.”

Site-based management
creates equity issue

For many teacher-librarians, the real rub
is that students who would bene t the most
from a well-resourced, well-staffed school
library are the least likely to have access to
one.

“Poor children and children of color are
least likely to have access to a high-quality library program, and the research shows they
are the most likely to bene t,” says Urban.

In part, this has to do with the amount of
adult guidance a child receives in a library.
Middle class children are more likely to have
reading role models at home than children
who live in poverty. This becomes a significant problem at the middle primary grades
when, Urban explains, a drop-o in reading
occurs. "The number one reason kids stop
reading is that they don’t know what to read
next," says Urban, citing research done by
Scholastic.

"Whereas middle class children will go to
the library and receive help from their parents in picking a book to read, poor children
and children of color are [disproportionately] more likely to not have a lot of guidance
when they're in a library," she says, speaking
to equity issues at play in access to library
services.

In 1980 there were 880 full time teacher-librarians employed in Oregon schools. By 2014 that number dropped to 144.

Exemplary school library
programs set the standard

Wilde’s lunchtime library zombie apocalypse, along with her other lunch and after-
school programs, is just one instance of an
exemplary Oregon school library program.
Whether it’s due to a supportive principal or
a teacher-librarian who has figured out how
to do more with less, there are school libraries across the state that serve as exemplars
that all districts can strive toward.

The zombie apocalypse was a clever ruse
to teach students wilderness survival skills
— and to suck them into the library. Wilde
invited in a wilderness survival expert from
the local community college, who trans-
formed the library into a post-apocalyptic
scene complete with tents, food rations, and
all kinds of survival gear.

Students were divided into table groups
where their wilderness survival skills were
put to the test. A winner emerged at each
of the two lunches, and those lucky students carried away survival packs stuffed
with food rations, bandanas, Band-Aids and
other assorted survival gear. All student participants received an “I survived the zombie
apocalypse at Cascade Middle School” bumper sticker.

“We got kids in there that normally
wouldn’t be in the library at lunch,” Wilde
says.

A persistent stereotype exists in the world
of all librarians, Maurer explains. It’s rare
to run across a pop culture depiction of a librarian who isn’t “shushing ” people. As
a result, the general public tends to see all
librarians as stuffy folks who demand whispering while they check out books. This
couldn’t be further from the truth.

Teacher-librarians are experts at packaging information so that the mundane becomes exciting.

“I hated the stuff that I teach,” Wilde says
about herself as a student. “I didn’t like to do
research. It wasn’t made exciting and interesting to me. When I teach I try to put myself
in those shoes. I want my lessons to be able
to connect.”

Babcock’s lessons certainly connect with
her elementary school students. She won
her district’s Certified Teacher of the Year
award last year for Ridgeview Elementary
School’s library program. She describes her
two pet projects as Oregon’s Battle of the
Books, a reading competition in which participants read selected books and answer
questions about their reading, and Book-
Tubes, a project in which students make
promotional videos for books.

Babcock attributes much of her success to
collaboration with her principal, Jim Crist,
who asked her when she started working
for him, “What do you want? What’s your
dream job?”

Together, Babcock says they hatched out
a plan to enhance, through a focus on instructional technology, the learning experience of students.

Babcock knows she is succeeding when
students are excited to spend time in the library.

“It’s not just a warehouse of books. You
need somebody who breathes life into it,”
she says.

Paige Battle and Nancy Sullivan, both
teacher-librarians for Portland Public
Schools, know a little something about motivating students. They run complementary
programs in their respective schools; Battle
is passionate about her author visit program
and Story Slam, while Sullivan runs a popular poetry slam program.

“Every day in the Madison Library is different, often radically so, depending on the
time of year and where classroom teachers
are with curriculum, research assignments,
and other projects,” Sullivan says, describing the library at Madison High School.

Karen Babcock, teacher-librarian at Ridgeview Elementary School in Spring eld, won her district's Certi ed Teacher of the Year award for her e orts in the school library.

“For example, today our History of Portland
classes are hosting a World’s Fair in the library. Students have created poster board
displays based on their research of the 1905
“World’s Fair,” or Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. Calliope music is playing,
the diameter of the largest tree in Oregon at
the time is taped off on the floor, there are
displays representing attractions from the
exposition. Classroom teachers are bringing
groups through to learn from the students in
the class.”

Advocating for school
libraries and ESSA

While Oregon’s school libraries have been
in a state of emergency for nearly a decade,
there are some positive signs of change.

Because of tireless advocacy from passionate teachers, librarians, and parents,
some school districts are re-investing in
school library programs.

Both Portland Public Schools and the
Beaverton School District brought back numerous teacher-librarians in 2015.

“There has been a push over the last few
years to reinstate at all levels,” Battle says.

It’s not just big districts that are refocusing on school libraries. The Three Rivers
School District in rural Josephine County
is small, yet has made it a priority to begin
strengthening the school library program.
One important step was the hiring of Urban,
the district’s librarian. Her job is to support
all 13 school libraries in the district.

One goal the district is working toward is
collaboration between classroom teachers
and teacher-librarians.

“My district and school board have been
very supportive of that connection,” Urban
says. “One challenge is how do we find the
funds to support it?”

There has recently been a glimmer of
hope in that arena.

The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015
(ESSA), which replaced No Child Left Behind, specifically includes teacher-librarians and high-quality libraries as eligible for
uses for some federal dollars.

“School librarians are mentioned in a few
places in the law, where they have never been
mentioned before,” Maurer explains, adding
that there’s a national effort in place to help
departments of education understand that
ESSA supports library funding.

All the necessary elements are now in
place to make a strong push to reinstate
teacher-librarians in Oregon schools:

School librarians ease the workload of
classroom teachers by shouldering one of
the most challenging aspects of instruction,
teaching research.